A couple weeks ago, a rediscovered McCall’s magazine article dating back 60 years – to 1958 – took the internet by storm. Kim Marx-Kuczynski from Madison, Wisconsin, found the old issue at a rummage sale and purchased it for $1. The article, entitled “129 Ways to Get a Husband,” suggested endless “cringe-worthy” ways to attract the attention of men, ranging from sweet to creepy to silly to stupid. Some examples include:
- Attend night school. Take courses men like.
- Read the obituaries to find eligible widowers.
- Be friendly to ugly men; handsome is as handsome does.
- Don’t take a job in a company run largely by women.
- Stumble when you walk into a room that he’s in.
- Stand in a corner and cry softly. Chances are good that he’ll come over to find out what’s wrong.
Additional suggestions included haunting golf courses, taking short vacations in different locations, attending sporting events, going to class reunions and choosing to sit next to men on public transportation.
“I think the article is reflective of the social mores of the era, and I found the comparison between what was acceptable then and what is acceptable now fascinating,” Ms. Marx-Kuczynski told Bored Panda. “It also made me grateful that so much progress has been made. … It’s outdated and absurd and funny, but it had serious intentions. Society has changed so much in the last 60 years, and this article exemplifies the differences between what our moms and grandmas grew up with compared to ourselves and the coming generations. It’s fascinating.”
The consensus in our modern era of feminism and equality between the sexes is “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Women no longer have to weep quietly in a corner or stumble at a strategic moment to meet someone.
Or do they?
Now let’s look at a 2015 article from the Huffington Post, arguably one of the strongest media supporters of feminism and gender equality. Updated on Dec. 6, 2017, the article is entitled “101 Everyday Places to Meet Single Men.”
We’re talking HuffPo, folks. The land of pink pussy hats. Their list is eerily similar to the 1958 McCall’s list and recommends women check out golf courses, night school classes, sporting events, class reunions and group vacations. In fact, the article bears so many similarities to the 1958 McCall’s list that I wonder if they found it two years before Ms. Marx-Kuczynski did.
For the last half-century, feminism has worked very hard to alter human nature and convince women a man isn’t essential to their happiness and marriage is a last resort. Women are encouraged to focus on their education and careers, to climb the corporate ladder, to show men they, too, are worthy of professional respect and accolades. And women have achieved miracles in the last half century. They’ve smashed that glass ceiling and triumphed in unbelievable ways. (Donald Trump’s strong record of hiring women executives is proof of that.)
But having achieved as much as they have, many women are belatedly realizing it came at great personal expense. As even the progressives at HuffPo show, most women eventually just want to settle down with a nice man and raise a family.
But many women simply don’t know how – either how to find a man, or how keep him for the long-term. If women spent as much time and energy preparing to become a wife as they did pursuing their careers, their personal lives might be very different indeed.
“Unlike every other generation in history,” writes Suzanne Venker in her excellent book “How to Choose a Husband,” “yours was taught to postpone marriage indefinitely or ignore it altogether, as though marriage had no bearing on your happiness. … But most people don’t want to stay single. Men and women are irrevocably drawn to one another. Since the beginning of time, this attraction has been the driving force of our survival as a species – and until recent decades has almost always resulted in lasting marriage. But somewhere along the line, we lost our way.”
Venker mentions the relentless anti-male/pro-female rhetoric to which so many progressive women are exposed – and therein lies the dichotomy with the HuffPo article. If the feminist readers of HuffPo are encouraged to climb the corporate ladder and prove to men how strong and competent they are, I wonder how HuffPo justifies printing an article echoing advice from 1958.
Clearly, not every woman wants to get married. But to deliberately teach women that marriage should not be one of their life’s goals because most men are sexist jerks is not just wrong, it’s evil. “Most men are much nicer than you’ve been led to believe,” observes Venker. “And most aren’t threatened by a woman with power. They care only when this power gets used against them or the marriage relationship.” [Emphasis in original.]
Deep down, I suspect progressives know this very well. Why else would HuffPo recreate a 1958 list as they did? As columnist Patty Ann Malley put it, “Times change. People don’t.”
The one thing so many modern women don’t want to hear is how much of the responsibility for the strength and unity of a marriage falls upon them. “Unless you marry a cad,” says Venker in italicized script, “what you bring to the marriage table may very likely determine the fate of your marriage.”
In other words, become the kind of woman you’d like to marry. No sane person wants to marry a shrieking harridan whose ideas of a fashion statement is a pink pussy hat – not unless the man is so emasculated that he actually thinks this is an attractive quality in a woman.
Venker’s closing advice for women wanting a happy marriage is to drop the bitterness, the competitiveness, the defensiveness, the sheer meanness so many women adopt because they think it makes them “powerful.” It doesn’t make them powerful; it makes them miserable and [w]itchy. [W]itchy wives aren’t happy, and neither are their husbands (or children).
I might conclude by daring to offer this advice to young women who want to meet a man: Act like a lady, not a feminist. Weaponizing your womanly strengths against men could well mean a lonely life ahead.
